Bernie Sanders To Democrats: This Is What a Radical Foreign Policy Looks Like

Bernie Sanders, nowthe most popular politician in the United States by a country mile, has long been obsessed with breaking up big banks and getting Medicare for all Americans. He can speak for hours about the evils of income inequality and the grotesquerie of the “billionaire class.”

On foreign policy? Not so much.

Yet this week, the independent senator from Vermont finally delivered his major foreign affairs speech at Westminster College, in Fulton, Missouri, part of the Green Foundation Lecture series. Winston Churchill gave his “Sinews of Peace” speech at Westminster College — in which he famously introduced the world to the concept of “The Iron Curtain” — as part of this lecture series in 1946. Mikhail Gorbachev’s memorable 1992 account of how the Cold War ended was also part of this series. Thus, on the basis of his appearance in Fulton, you might say that Sanders is now playing in the Foreign Policy Big Leagues.

Beforehand, he sat down with me to talk through his thinking on global affairs.

“I think what we have to do is take a hard look at where we are today in terms of foreign policy, and where we have been for many years,” Sanders tells me when I go to meet with him in his Senate office in Washington, D.C. the day before his big speech in Missouri. “And I think the main point to be made is that no country, not the United States or any other country, can do it alone. That if we’re going to address the very deep and complicated international issues that exist, we need to do it in cooperation.”

The senator is tieless, in a crumpled navy suit and light blue shirt. His shock of white hair is, as usual, unruly. He looks distracted and exhausted, perhaps the result of having spent the previous week pitching his landmark Medicare for All single-payer bill to Congress and to the country.

“Many of my colleagues, Republican colleagues, here in the Senate, for example, disparage the United Nations,” he says, sitting across the table from me, in front of a wall of Vermont tourism posters. “While clearly the United Nations could be more effective, it is imperative that we strengthen international institutions, because at the end of the day, while it may not be sexy, it may not be glamorous, it may not allow for great soundbites, simply the idea … of people coming together and talking and arguing is a lot better than countries going to war.”

I ask him how such rhetoric differs from past statements in defense of the U.N. and of international cooperation offered by leading Democrats, such as Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry.

“Excuse me.” Sanders doesn’t like to be interrupted. “Let me just talk a little bit about where I want to go.”

The senator makes clear that “unilateralism, the belief that we can simply overthrow governments that we don’t want, that has got to be re-examined.” After referencing the Iraq War — “one of the great foreign policy blunders in the history of this country” — the senator touches on another historic blunder which, to his credit, few of his fellow senators would be willing to discuss, let alone critique. “In 1953, the United States, with the British, overthrew [Mohammed] Mossadegh, the prime minister of Iran – and this was to benefit British oil interests,” he reminds me. “The result was the shah came into power, who was a very ruthless man, and the result of that was that we had the Iranian Revolution, which takes us to where we are right now.”

Does he regret not speaking with such passion, bluntness, and insight on international affairs during his failed primary campaign against Clinton? He shakes his head. “No, I think we ran the kind of campaign that we wanted to run.” There’s a pause. “But I think that foreign policy is clearly very, very important.”

During the Democratic presidential primaries, politicians and pundits alike agreed that Sanders had a foreign policy deficit. “Foreign policy,” wrote David Ignatius, the Washington Post’s foreign affairs doyen, “is the hole in Sanders’s political doughnut.” Patrick Leahy, Sanders’s fellow senator from Vermont, was only a tad more diplomatic in an interview with the New York Times. “It’s not the subject he gravitates to, that’s fair to say,” acknowledged Leahy.

A long-promised set piece speech on foreign policy during the campaign never came, and the Sanders campaign website lacked a foreign policy page for the first few months of his candidacy. Some of the figures identified by the senator as outside advisers on national security issues later claimed to hardly know him.

His discomfort with the topic is palpable, but the truth is that the 76-year-old Sanders is far from a foreign policy neophyte. In the 1980s, as mayor of Burlington, Vermont, he was an outspoken critic of U.S. interventions in Latin America, becoming the highest-ranking elected U.S. official to visit Nicaragua and meet with President Daniel Ortega (which earned him the soubriquet “Sandernista”). He even went on honeymoon to the Soviet Union in 1988, as part of his effort to establish a sister city program between Burlington and Yaroslavl.

Since 1991, Sanders has served in Congress, as a member of the House and then the Senate, debating and voting on military action, foreign treaties, trade deals, arms sales, international aid, and climate change agreements. Few critics have paused to consider the fact that a President Sanders would have arrived in the White House in January 2017 with far more foreign policy experience under his belt than Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. (Oh, and of course former reality TV star Donald J. Trump.)

Nevertheless the impression persists that Sanders is out of his depth when it comes to the outside world. Perhaps in anticipation of another presidential bid in three years time, the Vermont senator has been taking steps to correct that impression. So far this year, Sanders has hired Matt Duss, a respected foreign affairs analyst and former president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace (FMEP), as his foreign policy adviser, and has given speeches at the liberal Jewish lobbying group, J Street, where he condemned “Israel’s continued occupation of Palestinian territories” as being “contrary to fundamental American values,” and at the centrist Carnegie Endowment of International Peace, where he rebuked Russian President Vladimir Putin for “trying to weaken the transatlantic alliance.”

“I mean, that’s a whole other issue. And I don’t know the answer to that.”

I persist. Surely he’d concede that foreign policy was a factor in Clinton’s defeat?

He doesn’t budge. “I want to talk about my speech, not about Hillary Clinton.”

So foreign policy plays no role in elections?

“The answer is, I don’t know,” he responds wearily. “You can argue that somebody would say, ‘Well Bernie Sanders was too soft on defense, I’m not gonna vote for him because he’s not prepared to bomb every country in the world.’ Do you know how many voters I’ve lost because of that? We don’t know, that’s speculation.” (Not quite: Greenwald cited an academic study published earlier this year which argued “that had the U.S. fought fewer wars, or at least experienced fewer casualties, Clinton would have … won the election.”)

I ask him if there is a foreign policy equivalent to Medicare for All — that is, a radical progressive policy proposal that Sanders intends to campaign on and make mainstream.

“I wouldn’t look at it like that,” he tells me. “Anyone who thinks there is a simple solution in dealing with all of the horrific and longstanding conflicts in the world would be mistaken … Where we’ve got to be radical is to understand we cannot continue with simply using military as a means of addressing foreign policy issues.”

Despite once having hung a picture of legendary antiwar activist Eugene Debs in his congressional office, Sanders is not a pacifist. He backed NATO’s air campaign in Kosovo in 1999 and the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Afghanistan in 2001. Yet he opposed the Iraq War and voted against the arming and training of Syrian rebels. So, I wonder, does he have his own test that has to be met before the United States should use force?

The senator makes it clear to me that, in his view, military action should be a last resort, except in cases of genocide. “I think there has to be a legitimate understanding that American interests are being threatened. Obviously if someone was going to wage war against the United States, attack the United States, there is very good reason to respond.” He continues: “When you’re looking at genocidal situations, where people are being slaughtered right and left … we need international peacekeeping force to address that.”

Earlier this week, the president of the United States made what some might call a genocidal threat at the U.N. in New York: “If [the U.S.] is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.”

I remind the senator that both Obama and Trump came to office pledging to meet with their North Korean counterparts — yet Obama never did while Trump is now busy mocking Kim Jong-un as “Rocket Man.” Does Sanders think a meeting between the two heads of state would be of value?

The senator says he would not object to “face-to-face meetings done in good faith” — rather than as cynical photo opportunities — and says that “in general, discussions and face-to-face meetings” are worthy of support.

So, to be clear, would he support a U.S. president sitting down with the leader of North Korea to try and resolve the nuclear crisis? He shrugs. “Could I see that? Yeah, I could see that, yeah.”

One foreign policy issue, however, on which Sanders has attracted criticism from members of his own left-wing base is the Israel-Palestine conflict. Some pro-Palestinian progressives have accused him of giving Israel a pass. In an interview in April, for example, Sanders dismissed the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement; he also signed his name to a controversial letter attacking the U.N. for having an “anti-Israel agenda.”

Nonetheless, it is undeniable that in recent years the Vermont senator, who is Jewish and briefly lived on a kibbutz in Israel in the 1960s, has taken a more pro-Palestinian position on the conflict and, specifically, against the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu. “There comes a time when … we are going to have to say that Netanyahu is not right all of the time,” he told Clinton during a Democratic primary debate in April 2016.

These days, unlike other members of Congress, Sanders has no qualms about identifying, and decrying, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. But does he accept that the United States is complicit in Israel’s occupation, through its military aid and arms sales? And does he also accept, therefore, that the occupation of the Palestinian territories will never end until the U.S. stops arming and funding the Jewish state?

“Certainly the United States is complicit, but it’s not to say … that Israel is the only party at fault,” he tells me. However, he adds, “in terms of Israeli-Palestinian relations the United States has got to play a much more even-handed role. Clearly that is not the case right now.”

Would he, therefore, ever consider voting to reduce U.S. aid to Israel — worth at least $3bn per annum — or U.S. arms sales to the Israeli military?

“The U.S. funding plays a very important role, and I would love to see people in the Middle East sit down with the United States government and figure out how U.S. aid can bring people together, not just result in an arms war in that area. So I think there is extraordinary potential for the United States to help the Palestinian people rebuild Gaza and other areas. At the same time, demand that Israel, in their own interests in a way, work with other countries on environmental issues.” He then, finally, answers my question: “So the answer is yes.”

It is — by the depressingly low standard of modern U.S. politics — a remarkable and, dare I say it, radical response from Sanders. “Aid to Israel in Congress and the pro-Israel community has been sacrosanct,” the Jewish Telegraphic Agency noted earlier this year, “and no president has seriously proposed cutting it since Gerald Ford in the mid-1970s.”

Bernie Sanders is interviewed about his foreign policy views in his office at the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2017.

Photo: Matt Roth for The Intercept

Jeremy Corbyn, the left-wing Labour Party leader in the United Kingdom, who is constantly compared to Sanders, grabbed headlines in May after urging Britons in a speech, to “be brave enough to admit the war on terror is simply not working” and to draw “connections between wars our government has supported or fought in other countries and terrorism here at home.” In the past, the Labour leader has labelled NATO a “danger to world peace” and called for engagement with groups, such as the Irish Republican Army, Hezbollah, and Hamas.

You might say Corbyn is a genuine radical on foreign policy. Is the more cautious Sanders willing to match the Labour leader’s rhetoric on terrorism and the West’s response to terrorism? Does he, for example, think the United States has lost the so-called war on terror?

“Well, no, that’s too general of a question,” he replies dismissively. “I think you best deal with terrorism by trying to understand the root causes of those problems: the massive poverty that exists, the lack of education that exists, that when you drop a drone, for example, that kills innocent men, women, and child, that it only forms more antagonism toward the United States.”

I ask about the role of Saudi Arabia in allegedly supporting and funding terrorism. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers, lest we forget, were Saudi citizens. So is it an ally or enemy of the United States?

“It is not just that many of the 9/11 bombers came from Saudi Arabia,” he says, “what I think is more significant is their … continuing to fund madrasas and to spread an extremely radical Wahhabi doctrine in many countries around the world. And they are funding these mosques, they’re funding the madrasas, and they are fomenting a lot of hatred.”

Sanders wants the United States to pivot away from blind, uncritical support for the Gulf kingdom. He even seems to suggest that the United States should embrace the Saudis’ mortal enemy: the Iranians.

So could this be his foreign policy equivalent of Medicare for All? Trying to end almost four decades of hostility and mistrust between the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran? Without firing a shot? It would be a dramatic and historic shift in approach. During the presidential primaries, Sanders was attacked for suggesting that the U.S. should “move as aggressively as we can to normalize relations with Iran.”

Yet, almost two years later, he isn’t afraid to make the case again. “I think that one of the areas that we have got to rethink, in terms of American foreign policy, is our position vis-a-vis Iran and Saudi Arabia,” he tells me, leaning forward in his chair. “For whatever reason — and I think we know some of the reasons having to do with a three-letter word called oil — the United States has kind of looked aside at the fact that Saudi Arabia is an incredibly anti-democratic country and has played a very bad role internationally, but we have sided with them time and time and time again, and yet Iran, which just held elections, Iran whose young people really want to reach out to the West, we are … continuing to put them down.”

While Sanders has “legitimate concerns … about Iran’s foreign policy” he wants a more “even-handed” approach from the United States to the “Iran and Saudi conflict.”

So I try to pin him down on the nature of the U.S.-Saudi relationship and ask again: Does he or does he not consider Saudi Arabia to be ally of the United States in the so-called war on terror?He pauses. “Do I consider them an ally? I consider them to be an undemocratic country that has supported terrorism around the world, it has funded terrorism, so I can’t … No, they are not an ally of the United States.”

Wait, maybe this is the foreign policy Medicare For All — downgrading diplomatic ties with one of the world’s worst regimes. Distancing Washington from Riyadh. But could Sanders really pull it off? Help persuade his fellow senators, on both sides of the aisle to depart from the decades-long bipartisan consensus on Saudi Arabia as a key U.S. ally? In June, the senator joined four Republicans and 42 Democrats to try and block a $510 million sale of precision-guided munitions to Saudi Arabia. They were defeated — but by only six votes.

Greeted by a cheering crowd of students Thursday and awarded an honorary degree by the college in advance of his speech, a stern Sanders denounced the global war on terror as “a disaster for the American people” because it “responds to terrorists by giving them exactly what they want.”

He also offered a rousing defense of Obama’s key foreign affairs legacy: the Iran nuclear deal. “We must protect this deal,” Sanders told his audience, citing the nuclear agreement as an example of “real leadership” on the part of the United States.

Over the course of an hour on Thursday, the independent senator offered an unashamedly progressive, diplomacy-oriented, non-militarized vision of U.S. foreign policy in the 21st century: “The goal is not for the United States to dominate the world. … Our goal should be global engagement based on partnership, rather than dominance.

At a time when the U.S. president is beating the drums of war, threatening to “totally destroy” North Korea and tear up the Iran nuclear deal, it is both refreshing and admirable to hear a leading U.S. politician speak in this direct way. Sanders tells me that he wants a “serious discussion about foreign policy” — which, shamefully, is something his Democratic colleagues in the Senate have yet to agree to. For example, he points to a vote in the Senate on Monday, which authorized a whopping $80 billion annual increase in Pentagon spending. “Is that really a wise investment?” he asks.

“I dare say,” he adds acidly, “that most of the people who voted for this huge increase in military spending really would not be able to tell you exactly why it is needed.”

Only four Senate Democrats joined Sanders to vote against the bill. Why does he think the rest of them voted for it?

“You’ll have to ask them,” is the curt rejoinder.

Some of his critics on the left, however, don’t think Sanders goes far enough. Writing in July, Jacobin’s Branko Marcetic castigated Sanders over his “relative silence on Obama’s foreign policy” and his “fairly conventional foreign policy thinking throughout his Washington career.” Such critics tend to want to see a full-throated, Noam Chomsky-style denunciation of U.S. imperialism from Sanders — and they want to see it yesterday.

Interestingly, in 1985, Sanders invited Chomsky to speak in Burlington City Hall, introducing him to the crowd as “a very vocal and important voice in the wilderness of intellectual life in America” and saying he was “delighted to welcome a person who I think we’re all very proud of.” In 2016, when I interviewed Chomsky for my Al Jazeera English show, UpFront, the veteran philosopher and foreign policy critic heaped praise on Sanders as a “decent, honest” politician with “the best policies.”

I ask Sanders if, three decades later, he still agrees with Chomsky’s blistering critique of U.S. foreign policy across the board, including his provocative description of the United States as a “rogue state.”

Sanders cuts me off before I can finish my question. “OK, I get it. Noam Chomsky has played an extraordinarily important role. I am a United States senator. We live in different worlds.” He quickly — and conveniently — changes the subject. “Bottom line is I think we need to rethink foreign policy … and that means dealing with issues like income and wealth inequality, which is not only an American issue, it is a horrific global issue.” Sanders is now in his element and on a roll. “We have six of the wealthiest people who have more wealth than the bottom half of the world’s population. We need to deal with the issue of climate change, because if we don’t get our act together internationally on that, we may not have much of a planet left for our children and our grandchildren.”

Let’s be clear: On foreign policy, Sanders does not go as far in a left-wing direction as his old friend Noam Chomsky or even his U.K. counterpart Jeremy Corbyn. But his renewed interest in foreign policy and his willingness to break with the established consensus could be among his most radical acts yet.

“Where we’ve got to be radical,” Sanders tells me, “is to understand that we cannot continue with simply using military as a means of addressing foreign policy issues. Where we have got to be radical and forceful, in an unprecedented way, is to force debate and discussion on the causes of international conflict – and certainly, we have not been doing that, and we need more American leadership to do that.”

Top photo: Sen. Bernie Sanders during an interview in Washington, D.C. on Sept. 20, 2017.

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Why on earth is The Intercept risking its reputation for serious news coverage and informed opinion by publishing this interview by a second rate journalist? Next time, please send someone with foreign policy knowledge and incisive intellectual ability like Glenn Greenwald!

With Bernie Sanders now essentially firing a “Shout heard round the world” against; hegemony, imperialism, and EMPIRE — the MSM that hides behind a distractive focus on only the lesser ‘Issues’ and “Culture Wars” is going to find itself on the wrong side of history in the fast coming Second American “Revolution Against Empire” [Justin duRivage].

The NYT ‘personification’ of the underlying cause of all these ‘Issues’, “Culture Wars”, and ‘symptom problems’ as being only connected to Trump himself is an extreme disservice and really a distraction, to ‘we the American people’.

While faux-Emperor Trump is an easy target for lesser media it is disappointing to see the “Times” personifying this pompous, arrogant, megalomaniac sociopath Vichy Emperor as the causal cancer of our national ‘disease’ — just as it would have been for the French to put all the blame on Marshall Petain, when the Nazi Empire was the underlying cause of all the war-crimes inflicted on French citizens.

It is far past time for the “Times” to avoid addressing the fact that our country has clearly, like France c. 1940, been ‘captured’, controlled, and “Occupied” by a far more; ‘effectively-Disguised’, ‘truly-Global’, and crony ‘Capitalist-fueled’ Empire than was France during the Second World War of Empires.

The longer the “Times” acts like a Royalist paper against the coming Revolution the more it is digging its own grave.

If you’d read Manufacturing Consent, you wouldn’t bother with trying to suggest to the NYT that they salvage their reputations. Other than just venting, it accomplishes nothing; they’re deaf to such ideas.

The most Popular man in America? This guy is a Communist. He spent his honey moon in the Soviet Union when the Soviet Union had 10,000 Nuclear bombs pointed at England and the rest of it’s allies. American’s aren’t fooled by this idiot neither should you.

I’m not sure we can say how far Sanders goes on foreign policy. He’s wily, and knows the political system well. He knows there are some things that perhaps shouldn’t be said until the time is right.
As a politician he has to remember that many of his potential voters are ignorant and have knee-jerk responses to certain ideas. Gently, gently.

People are dying right now. You are still focusing on the slobbering liar on the left – the mirror to the slobbering liar on the right that is our president. They are different sides of the same coin: EASY SOLUTIONS TO COMPLEX PROBLEMS and incapable of doing any homework.

How about an article on how Sanders and Trump are similar?
– both don’t listen
-both have entertained the Soviet Union/Russa
-both hate Hillary Clinton
-both think women’s issues are not as important as wealth
-both are detached from the poverty affecting every race in the nation.
-both are detached from their rhetoric: do as I say, not as I do.
— a socialist with three houses; a businessman who is a failure
-both have had supporters behave in violent ways at rallies or against perceived enemies
-both men have supporters who have openly expressed support for white supremacy and hatred of feminism
-both are not part of either political party it hijacked in the last election
-both have relationships with Julian Assange and Wikileaks
-both slobber

No one has written such because it would ridiculous, and no, such a comparison does not confirm your possession of functional gray matter in your skull. To assert that even the weakest of Bernie’s proposals are ‘easy answers to complex problems’ only serves to show that you have a ridiculously partisan mindset, mired in Beltway nonsense.

Bernie’s foreign policy, at times, doesn’t go far enough to the left. He is cautious, perhaps because of the long battle with the deep state and the military-industrial complex that he will have to face, should he become president. I cannot agree with his assessment of Assad in Syria, there has been no proof of him using chemical weapons on his own people, however, there IS proof of repeated use of said weapons by ISIS.

He supported the US-NATO destruction of Yugoslavia.
He supported the US invasion of Somalia.
He supported the 2001 AUMF.
He called for the prosecution of Snowden.
He’s repeatedly voted to authorize military spending for US aggression against Iraq and Afghanistan.
He supported the Washington-installed fascist regime in Ukraine.
He helps maintain the dangerous illusion that we can save ourselves if only we elect the right person.

The above, and below were pulled from a post made by online poster Maxwell some months ago:

If Sanders were even halfway honest about all the “anti-billionaire” populist hot air he blows he wouldn’t support billionaires would he? Not even a little bit right? Would he have supported Bill Clinton who through various and numerous pieces of legislation handed over billions to Wall St? Would he support the US Military Industrial Complex all the time which is one of the the pillars of profit for the billionaire class? Would he have supported Lynch and Holder? Would he have expressed admiration for one of the billionaire class’ most reliable figureheads- Hillary Clinton? Would he work for Democrats on numerous occasions, a party that is owned by billionaires? Would he have supported ACA legislation that has spiked stocks in the health care industry which have gone directly into the pockets of the billionaire class? One could write a tome of hypocrisies on this fraud Bernie Sanders

However when Sanders puts his energy- and votes- into supporting the US Industrial Military Complex (which he has done and does religiously) he is doing exactly that. When he supports and ties his wagon to a party whose allegiances are with that billionaire class Sanders also lends support to that class. When he declares over and over he will support Hillary he is lending his support and legitimacy to one of the most powerful and reliable functionaries of that billionaire class.

If Sanders fan club were even halfway honest (or were able to use their critical thinking skills) about any of this they would see that all their support for Sanders is nothing more than outright support of the Democrats. It’s as clear as day. And most of them are and have been for years 100% true to the Democratic Party and only use esoteric candidacies like Sanders, Kucinich et al in an attempt to disguise this fact.
This is not difficult to understand. If Sanders was even close to what his believers believe him to be he would have separated himself from the Democrats and incited a “political revolution” outside of the two-party system. But of course we know the opposite to be true. Once Sanders lost an election he was taken to the woodshed and informed at Harvard what it would take for him to get back into the game and he now knows that his wagon must be tied to the venal Democrats if he is to continue to have a prominent role in the cesspool of “practical politics.”

Sanders role in this election is to restore the tarnished image of The Democrats who took quite a hit in 2008 and 2012 as the shallow do-nothing Obama supporters have become disenchanted with Wall St. Errand Boy and War Criminal that they brought to power (these same Dem Party zealots have not even held their criminal leader’s feet to the fire- shouldn’t they do that first before offering up another Trojan Horse?). Sanders is just another in a long line of Democratic Party soft imperialists who is placed in The Spectacle in order to return these disaffected Donkey Cultists back into the pen of bourgeoisie politics and the Dem Party specifically.

And there is the matter of Sanders record with numerous examples of hypocrisy and political maneuverings. On Iraq not only did he support sanctions when a Dem was in office but he voted to continue funding the Iraq War even as he spoke against it. On Afghanistan his supporters may noticed, despite the religious fervor, their “anti-war” hero not only votes to fund that criminal act but recently spoke outin favor of keeping all the troops there…..

Seymour Hersh used Western Intelligence and the UN to back his claims.

Would you accept evidence provided by the UN if the UN concludes that Syrian Forces used chemical weapons against civilians? Or you would accept UN evidence only when Seymour Hersh presents them?

The other article is more about opinions than investigations. None of these individuals had access to the crime scenes. Of course, you will describe those opinions as evidence because they say what you want to hear.

Correct, no one has conclusive proof of who was responsible, but whatever you want to dispute about the evidence that Hersh and others present, logic suggests that there was no motive for Assad to use chemical weapons against his own people in either the first or second chemical attach – the first when UN inspectors had just arrived in the country and were stationed only a few miles away from where the attack took place; the second in an area where Syrian forces were clearly winning the conflict. Why would Assad wilfully bring international condemnation down on his government when there was no logical advantage? Doesn’t compute.

“Why would Assad wilfully bring international condemnation down on his government when there was no logical advantage? Doesn’t compute.”

I do not know. A genocide was committed in Rwanda in front of the UN, foreign diplomats, and international TVs by a government that was recognized by the international community and that controlled most of the country. Find an expert in dictatorship and ask her to explain their bizarre and violent actions.

You are telling us your opinion. That is fine, but I did not ask you what you think about Assad. I asked questions that none of you are willing to answer. Again:

What kind of proof would you need and who should present you those proofs?

I will make it easier. Supposed I accused Assad of using chemical weapons, tell me what kind of evidence you would accept to agree with that accusation and who should present you that evidence.

You’re engaging in tautology. Obviously, short of being there or personally knowing someone who was, there is no definitive proof of anything. So we use our knowledge and judgement about what is happening in the world to read critically and question what we are being told. In the case of Assad’s alleged chemical attacks, I question the mainstream narrative based on its dubious logic and the history of lies and deception that have brought us to war in the past, from Vietnam to Iraq. And when respected journalists who do in depth investigations like Seymour Hersh provide another perspective I tend to believe them more than the MSM reporters who are mostly stenographers for the State Department and the Pentagon. Hope that answers your question.

That is not tautology because I am not using different words. I am using exactly the same words because you guys do not want to answer the extremely simple question. Seymour Hersh is not the one who will present the evidence to the court. He just uses western intelligence reports and UN reports to give his opinions. I can also use western intelligence reports and UN reports that fully contradict his opinions to present my opinions.

I did not ask you whether you trust Fox News opinions more than you trust Hersh’s opinions. I asked you what kind of evidence would you accept and who should present that evidence. Seymour Hersh did not analyze flight schedules, radar imagery, air sample, intercepted communications…somebody with special authority did. Hersh does not have that authority. He cannot decide who should be brought to courts. I am asking whom that person or organization should be in order for you to trust them. If your argument is that I do not trust anybody but Hersh, then you can say so. You just have to understand that his opinion cannot stop war crimes or the perpetrators.

Our Bernie delivers to us in that he is working to encourage his Washington coworkers to support issues that support us. These interviews seem helpful but they constantly ask him to be so radical that the support he has in Washington from his colleagues would become endangered. If we want the changes that we have been wanting then it’s time to envision how that looks how it feels and take the positives from these alignments to make them happen. Senator Sanders is working with honest intention to create a different mindset in Congress, yet people want more and more and more before these great strides are truly realized for all of us. Jill Stein could not have accomplished what this Senator has because he IS inside the governance maze.

The sad thing is how Sanders comes over both feisty and slippery. Having watched and read many of Jeremy Corbyn’s interviews the two men are worlds apart. Corbyn comes over as genuine, humorous, straightforward and likeable. The United States in an even worse state than I thought.

I find this interesting website, it’s covering my man Sanders, then I read this dreck: “Earlier this week, the president of the United States made what some might call a genocidal threat at the U.N. in New York: ‘If [the U.S.] is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.'”

That nonsense categorization (“might call genocidal”) is hyperbolic & stupid, it’s reaching for insult out of groupthink. And worst of all it flies in the face of English language fact. It has been the policy of the US for over 50 years to retaliate with nuclear weapons to the use of any nuclear weapons against us, or any ally with with we have such a treaty obligation. Calling it genocidal is so dumb it’s embarrassing. No doubt the author here is a kid who knows as much about the Cold War as I do about popular TV ie nothing.

The US is the only country ever to have used nuclear weapons, and it wasn’t in retaliation for the use of nuclear weapons against us. Japanese non-combatants were the targets. The US government nuked them not once but twice.

Thanks for a solid article from a writer has been something of a Sanders skeptic. Bernie is about as radical as anyone in the US Senate on issues of war and peace with the exception of Rand Paul. And compared to most in Congress is a radical on behalf of the Palestinian people. I noticed that a commenter criticized him for using the word “counterproductive” in his remarks about drones calling them “terrible” as well as “counterproductive”. The commenter was really upset. Yes let’s ignore the radical (for the US) things Bernie said. And let’s remember how imperfect he has been. Forget that he is asking us to join with him in a radical re-thinking of our foreign policy.

Exactly Jackie.
There are some issues/positions that I disagree with Sanders about. But to render him just as egregious as nearly all others in politics is pretentious and, well, counterproductive when working toward improving the nation.
To provide a cheap simile, it is like refusing to support a student that has gotten an A- on a test because they should’ve gotten an A+. You can be critical of Sanders, suggest to him that he should change his policies, politely provide reasons as to why he should if you feel so. But this is a bit different than trying to do so with most other politicians; expressing beliefs or thoughts doesn’t always have to mean having a bunch of cash.

Seems more like a tactical shift than a re–thinking of foreign policy . . like he’s trying to obscure his earlier support for the defense industry and the gulf war. Doubt he’ll get much support from his colleagues in the senate (Elizabeth Warren, Al Franken, etc. see the link) but at least it preserves his rebel image, which is really just a mirage . .

Sen. Sanders on the illegal, unethical drone war: “Look, a drone is a weapon. When it works badly, it is terrible and it is counterproductive. When you blow up a facility or a building which kills women and children, you know what? … It’s terrible.”.

On first reading of this interview, I was impressed that Sanders seemed to be promoting global cooperation as opposed to bombs and regime change, but now having read the actual speech I feel like a sucker. Not only did he state as fact (not allegation) that the Russians hacked the US elections and interfered with our great democracy, he went on to say he would confront Putin and support the Russian opposition. So basically he would interfere with the political process of another sovereign nation while accusing them with interfering with ours, and, of course, made no mention of US meddling in regime change in the Ukraine. All leading me to conclude that Sanders is not the peace candidate he claims to be and given his voting record of supporting military spending and backing US intervention overseas, he’s a total hypocrite.

Well said. If one reviews the presidential primary campaign and now these tentative forays of Sanders into foreign policy subjects, it is clear that he is making himself an apparatchik of the Democratic Party, filling out the leftist forms for good measure.

I know that defending Putin/Russia is de rigueur here, but evidence seems to point to the case that Russia has at least probed states’ election systems, probably with the intention of changing things around.

Do I trust the Intelligence Community – mostly, no. But neither do I distrust everything they do. While I would like to see the whole IC shrunken to a manageable size, I am not so naive to believe that other countries aren’t doing the same as us.

Sanders may be a leftist, but he is also pragmatic enough to realize that some things just are, and he needs to walk a line when dealing with the political realities that are present.

Actually, I am not arguing whether or not Russia attempted to hack the DNC or state computers with the intention of influencing the election despite the fact that there is no conclusive proof and considerable evidence suggesting that they did not. What I am saying is that while Sanders is playing this politically expedient card of blaming the Kremlin and saying that he will therefore be engaging with the Russian opposition, he is contradicting everything else he said in his interview about believing the US should not be involved in regime change around the world. That to my mind is total hypocrisy.

Bernie sucking up to the scum on the left, I am sure he is aware Israel is in the right in this conflict, but he is to afraid to actually stand up for Israel because he is afraid he is going to lose his status as a “hero” of the left

1000% agree that Israel needs to be supported. In particular
-Iran needs to recognize Israel.
-Hezbollah and Iran need to be contained in the Levant.
But:
-Israel needs to stop settelments now.
-Make its nuclear program more transparent.
-Open serious negotiations about Palestine.
-Open trade with Iran and the Levant, a win win.

What Bernie needs to subscribe to?
The medical expanation of the corruption of America and details of mass addiction.
Dr. Robert Lustig, endocrinologist
How and why America has done a 180 from the declaration of independence.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKkUtrL6B18

At least the author does realize that calling Sanders foreign policy “radical” only makes sense when juxtaposed against hundreds of other jingoists and sycophants in DC. Bernie called for a 50% reduction in military spending during his first congressional run. Nary a whimper since then.

The fact that we are supposed to get behind Sanders, a man with dozens of votes to fund military expeditions, wars, bombings, etc is just ludicrous. We need a real leader, not a milquetoast sheepdog.

If 3% to 5% of the most informed, progressive, principled anti-war (and anti-Empire) younger patriotic, peaceful, Americans do not start to immediately; ‘call-out’, expose, ‘shout-down’, and overtly protest ‘in the streets’ against this cancer of EMPIRE, which now so clearly is killing our country under faux-EMPEROR/president Trump’s insane regime —- there will be no future for any of us, our children, grandchildren, our fellow global citizens, or our fragile little world!

We’re all Holly’wierd conditioned and we need a charismatic leader before we wrest ourselves away from our TV sets and I-phones. We’re hopelessly divided as a nation and much more into attacking each other than going after the real criminals. Revolution is the solution! Nothing is ever going to change when we have to use the rotten system to effect change. NOTHING!

Sanders’ visit coincided with the run-up to polling day in the June 8 general election and he gave his endorsement to Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. At the Brighton Festival, he said of Corbyn, “What has impressed me—and there is a real similarity between what he [Corbyn] has done and what I did—is he has taken on the establishment of the Labour Party, he has gone to the grassroots and he has tried to transform that party… and that is exactly what I am trying to do.”

You support Jill Stein and the Green Party, right, as the third party alternative? Well, that’s politically unlikely, third parties don’t work in a federal political system as we have in the US – and Jill Stein is a politician too, who invests her money in mutual and index funds that are linked to ExxonMobil, Monsanto, Lockheed Martin, etc. Look up this on Duck Duck Go, Google, etc:
. . . green-partys-jill-stein-defends-big-oil-fund-investments-after-smear-attack-2016-10-28

Jill Stein and the Green Party? What? They don’t make political education a top-most priority. Stein and the Greens show how unserious they are about politics by their de-emphasis of political education.

Ah, most “political education” is slanted towards a particular flavor of politics, not a general survey of how groups of human beings make decisions, which is probably best called “political anthropology”. For some reason, I suspect that most “political educators” are really more concerned with indoctrination rather than education.

At the same time that civic educators seek to impart skills, knowledge, and participatory virtues, they also seek to engrain in society’s youth a felt connection to, if not an identity with, that country or society. . .

. . . Here lies a danger, however, for many forms of civic education: Those in charge of it may wish to indoctrinate students rather than educate them, thereby abandoning the very mission that they initially undertook.

. . . For some regimes—fascist or communist, for example—this is not a danger at all but, instead, the very purpose of their forms of civic education. Nowhere, however, is this danger more insidious than in democracy and, therefore, in democratic education.

Something to think about, perhaps? Can the people be trusted to think for themselves, or – as per authoritarian doctrine – must they be guided into proper thinking by an elite class of leaders?

Personally, I can’t stand the authoritarian control freaks, no matter what political stripes they wear – fascist, communist, capitalist, socialist, religious, whatever, they’re all the same beneath the surface.

Btw Snowden himself admitted that he broke the law and he would be willing to face charges but only IF he would be allowed a ‘just cause’ defense (the WW1 law under which all whistle blowers have been prosecuted) is not allowed.
In other words he could defend himself on the basis of WHY he did it and that fits with Sanders’ ” But he also said, “I think what he did in educating us should be taken into consideration.” THAT can make ALL the difference in any Court, but in my opinion I think he should steer clear of the US.

“foreign” policy – no such thing. A completely made-up corporate weasel word, now used repeatedly for generations. “Peace” policy is a “Progressive” values policy – All in. No One Out. If this is a “radical” “foreign ” policy, then welcome to Banksy’s bemusement park, “Dismaland”.

No one out, including so-called “foreigners”. Human beings will not accept this “consumer” colonization of American English or any other language, anywhere on Mother Earth. It’s takin’ a helluva longtime to fight this corporate-fabricated falsehood, mind-set, of preferring the belief of something over the knowing of something. I’ll take knowing every time, even if it means living like a refugee in one’s own country! Go Bernie!

Yes, showing actual diplomatic bones and approaching international crisis in a pragmatic & win-win mentality never works, it certainly didn’t work with China…oh wait.
Well, I’m sure it won’t work with Iran, I’m sure they’re violating the nuclear deal already…oh wait.
Well I mean, they’re a fundamentalist islamic theocracy so we have to oppose them to the core and threaten to attack them at every turn … oh shit I just remembered we are best buddies with Saudi Arabia/the UAE and we sell them billions of $ worth of weapons.

Wait now I’m confused : why do we have to be so jingoistic towards Iran and why isn’t the Iran deal a good exemple of how international relations should be conducted ?

I’m sure the Supreme Leader in Iran would love to send his hardcore negotiators against a powder-puff Sanders team, it would be embarrassing and might even turn some of the appeasers into hardcore realists.

Iran’s economy is dependent on the Nuke deal so they will meet the basic requirements while violating other UN resolutions whenever they can. This deal only delays their ability to produce Nukes by 365 days if they leave it and it was negotiated so well that none of their military facilities will ever be inspected. They continue to test their delivery system of ballistic missiles the final component of their Nuke capability.

China has brought new meaning to win-win negotiations with the weak diplomatic approach from the US and they are now stripping our high tech advantage as fast as they can.

You’re so far West you fell off the edge. The US and Israel are the two-in-one most dangerous State on earth and have been for 2 twenty-year generations (since Israel built its nuclear stockpile). Iran is a threat only to the extent every country that has successfully thrown off the imperial yoke and organized it’s own polity is a ‘threat’, i.e., as an example others might choose to follow – if there’s one thing the bi-State most detests, it’s the very idea that some other system might exist and succeed in maintaining itself with sovereign economic and monetary freedom. The US decision to go for global Empire, made in the years prior to the outbreak of WWII, was the single greatest political and geopolitical blunder in the history of liberal democracy since the Enlightenment. Illegitimately creating Israel then looking the other way while they helped themselves to the technology and resources required to arm themselves with a couple hundred nukes would be a very close second.

What history lesson has Iran, North Korea learned about negotiating with the U.S.? When Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria gave up their weapons and UN inspectors confirmed they were sufficiently de-fanged, the US, et al. proceeded to invade and reduce them to rubble. The U.S. has ruined future diplomacy as an alternative to war. Qui bono?

North Korea has never honored any agreement made with the US or other Asian powers so new appeasement will only produce the same results.

Most of these conflicts have little to do with WMD’s except for actual Nuke capabilities. The last of the Stalinist type states were targeted for regime change and the newer extreme Islamist regimes are today’s threat.

You have to face the reality of how the world is not how you believe it could or should be.

Nete, come on. This guy is an arrogant prick. I’ve listened to him on YouTube and he just likes the sound of his own voice. He acts like everything he has to say is BRILLIANT because he has a Brit accent, and that thinkers and activists that tower over him intellectually are due nothing more than his snotty condescension. He tried that crap with Noam too, who just looked at him to shut him down. I wanted to like him because he’s Al Jazzera, but he acts like a paid clintonista as do so many of the commenters here.

I’d like to build the world a home
And furnish it with love
Grow apple trees and honey bees
And snow white turtle doves
I’d like to teach the world to sing
In perfect harmony
I’d like to hold it in my arms
And keep it company
I’d like to see the world for once
All standing hand in hand
And hear them echo through the hills
For peace through out the land

So let me be clear: Foreign policy is directly related to military policy and has everything to do with almost seven thousand young Americans being killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and tens of thousands coming home wounded in body and spirit from a war we should never have started. That’s foreign policy. And foreign policy is about hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq and Afghanistan dying in that same war.

Foreign policy is about U.S. government budget priorities. At a time when we already spend more on defense than the next 12 nations combined, foreign policy is about authorizing a defense budget of some $700 billion, including a $50 billion increase passed just last week. . .

This bit might be a bit uncomfortable for news networks financed by billionaires, though:

Foreign policy is not just tied into military affairs, it is directly connected to economics. Foreign policy must take into account the outrageous income and wealth inequality that exists globally and in our own country. This planet will not be secure or peaceful when so few have so much, and so many have so little – and when we advance day after day into an oligarchic form of society where a small number of extraordinarily powerful special interests exert enormous influence over the economic and political life of the world.

There is no moral or economic justification for the six wealthiest people in the world having as much wealth as the bottom half of the world’s population – 3.7 billion people. There is no justification for the incredible power and dominance that Wall Street, giant multi-national corporations and international financial institutions have over the affairs of sovereign countries throughout the world.

As far as why the Intercept didn’t publish the full interview? That might reveal too much about the spin direction that the interviewer was pushing for comfort.

Thanks for the link but one of the first things that jump out at me in this, and virtually every other Public speaker in the US are the remarks about casualties.
It sounds like the only people that are traumatized, and those that die from the actions of our relentless war machine are Americans. Stories of the thousands of Americans that came home “wounded” from the war, or didn’t come home at all (except those in boxes) and no mention of the millions of refugees (early figures in the attack on Iraq from the Red Cross put the figure at FOUR MILLION) or the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people dead, not to mention the absolute destruction of Countries and cultures.
Also missing are the facts that we are enacting (over & over) what was determined at Nuremberg to be the ‘ultimate crime (s)’ of wars of “aggression” and not only do the guilty parties escape any punishment, they get great rewards…book deals, money from speeches, appointed to the Judiciary (for life), appointed to the Boards of respectable Universities and businesses (especially those war related) become big guests on top television shows, their pasts ignored.
OR as with Barack Obama they get immunity granted from both criminal and Civil charges (eg. victims of torture have their lawsuits thrown out of Court).

Imagine a ‘wall’ like the one for Vietnam with names of VICTIMS of our wars since this Country began and that does mean staring with the genocidal war against indigenous people and including,like some continual digital updating, the current day. We’d have our own ‘wall of China’ that could be seen from space.
If only there was a way to memorialize all the rich cultures we’ve extinguished as well, so we have been, and continue to be, a threat to Peace around the world. Not to mention when looking at the phenomenal amount of money just allocated to our military machine you can say not only are we not slowing down but we are picking up speed.
No, we no longer content ourselves with one war at a time, six or seven (acknowledged ) ‘conflicts’ are no problem in the Public eye. We are ‘spreading Democracy’…want some ?

True enough, but the fact is, most American citizens don’t see the foreign casualties of American military action, because the corporate media these days hides that reality from the public. If the Pentagon learned anything from the Vietnam war, it was “control the domestic media coverage” – hence the ’embedded reporter’ and the deliberate attacks on independent news reporters (targeting Al Jazeera reporters during the Iraq 2003 invasion, for example).

Thus, any politician in the U.S. who opposes the reckless and devastating U.S. regime change games these days, has to begin with discussing the American casualties involved, which are much less than the victims – but they are visible to the general public. American soldiers are drawn mainly from the lower economic stratum, too – and in poorer communities, you’ll see a lot more people missing arms and legs from their time spent in Iraq and Afghanistan than you’ll see in wealthy communities.

This is really about the insular nature of the American corporate media and the country as a whole – which acts as if the world ended at America’s national borders. For example, if you look at any other national TV services, like France24 or Al Jazeera, you’ll see a global weather report – geographical snapshots of every major inhabited continent – but the U.S. weather report, doesn’t even cover Mexico or Canada. Don’t think about the rest of the world, that’s the message.

It’s a deliberate propaganda effort to keep the residents of the “Homeland” ignorant of what’s going on in the “Colonies”, I think. This is why, for example, CNN would never cover American air tankers fueling Saudi jets on their way to bomb Yemen neighborhoods, nor would CNN cover the aftermath of such air raids. Nor do we see any coverage of American special forces advisors working with Kurds in Syria for very dubious foreign policy goals, nor coverage of the aftermath of drone strikes on villages in Afghanistan, Somalia, etc.

Thus I think Bernie Sanders has the right approach, really, by pointing out that this reckless neolib-neocon foreign policy really hurts the interests of the vast majority of American citizens, that’s the best way to ratchet it back.

During the Vietnam War era, I first becoming involved in both the Civil Rights Movement and the Peace Movement as an activist and Draft Counselor, following Dr. Martin Luther King’s 1967 speeches linking the two.

As does Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in this interview, and as he has over the last 50 years, Dr. King further made the connections once again between war and our fractured racial relations being linked directly to dire poverty, lack of education, and the lack of clear, honest communications between different peoples and between the nations of the world.

During this period of time was when I also became aware of Bernie Sanders role in racial harmony, his notable efforts as a college student himself, in the early 1960’s to end race based housing discrimination in Chicago, and his activities leading to his filing for Conscientious Objector status, something my older brother and I, following Bernie’s and others lead, did as well, when I became 18 and eligible for the Vietnam War draft.

Bernie Sanders is just 10 years or so older than I am, and I recall Bernie Sanders having a very clear picture of world events, and how our foreign policies, covert CIA activities and immoral military exploits interfering in the business of other countries if they did not “obey” us figured into those understandings.

The only surprise to me in this article was the fact that it seemed the author does not know much of Bernie Sander’s consistent life-long political philosophy, or of his very clear speeches in the past, where Bernie set forth a continuing line of thought and connects the dots between then and now in foreign relations, points we see today, updated and relevant, in the article.

One of the primary reasons why Bernie Sanders had so much support from those of us who came of age during the Vietnam War when he campaigned for President was that he is known among us as being Bernie the Peace Maker. It is why I have always followed Bernie Sanders’ political career and the progress he has made over the last five decades.

Perhaps the author was not making the connections voiced by Senator Sanders regarding a cabal of a few industrialists and financiers holding within their corrupt hands more than 60 % of the wealth of the world. America needs to address itself and our wealth iniquities between the 1 % super-wealthy and the 99 % of the rest of us , as well as what that corrupt wealth in the hands of the few is being used for today.

With our house clean; a responsive government comprised of intelligent, conscientiously aware and capable people in public office in place, then we can make a more positive difference in world affairs. We need more than just Bernie Sanders as our President of the United States, we need a U. S. Congress to reflect and enact better, more enlightened thought and far better policies to put us on the best path forward.

As a community organizer in Florida, I am already engaged in this task we have before us in 2018 and the 2020 elections.

Writing that Sanders “conveniently” shifted his talking points from the subject of Noam Chomsky and his ideals gives Sanders short shrift. Sanders is absolutely correct that both he and Chomsky occupy very different spheres of American life. Chomsky is free to partake in radically progressive philosophical discourse as a means to get us all thinking of different ways to interact with our domestic and global neighbors. Sanders is begrudgingly in an ongoing political cage match, where competing interests and sources of wealth vie for domination over weaker, poorer folks and nations. I’ll bet he would prefer a political environment that is as sane as he is and that is worthy of his talents, intelligence and tenacity. Both Chomsky and Sanders are fighting the good fight, and they must do it in very different ways because of their respective milieus.

Wrong on all counts. He’s the most popular politician in the country for a reason. Your candidate stayed in the race too long; indeed, she never should have run. You and the DNC fucked up, and now we have Trump. You’re in denial. Good luck in your recovery. Perhaps getting behind Sanders in his quest for single payer would act in a cathartic way for you. You are for single payer, right, liberal Democrat?

What generally passes for foreign policy expertise of late, in particular in the US, is of little more depth or consequence than debating the placement of deck chairs on a sinking ship; a babbling about tactics and details full of roads and plans that lead absolutely nowhere.

“Where we’ve got to be radical is to understand we cannot continue with simply using military as a means of addressing foreign policy issues” [Sanders].

That single thought if genuinely held is enough to make Mr. Sanders the sole adult in room of careening five year olds.

Any fool can make war. Destroying things takes absolutely no talent nor intellect whatsoever. Just the opposite. And yet, people take pride in being able to destroy things efficiently. After a while, such people become generals; fools in silly hats.

Building a future, harnessing people’s diverse talent and creativity worldwide for construction requires wisdom, heart and courage. Leadership. America, “the leader of the free world” has not been doing leadership for a long time now.

Unless Sanders declares war on the Democratic Party — instead of fueling illusions that it can be reformed or pushed left — and unless he calls for 1) enlisted personnel to disobey orders and refuse to deploy, for 2) civilians to carry out tax resistance, 3) an immediate end to the transfer of US taxpayer wealth to Israel, 4) dismantling of the CIA, 5) the US war criminals to be apprehended, put on trial, exposed, and when found guilty, executed, 6) the dismantling of the Federal reserve system, 7) closure of the hundreds of military bases around the planet which the US ruling class uses to maintain global dominance, 8) nationalization of the banks, 9) seizure of the assets of the billionaire class including the trillions of dollars hidden away in offshore accounts, 9) calling for civilians to oppose by any means necessary the drilling of oil fields and further extraction of sequestered carbon, 10) a comprehensive auditing and exposure of the weapons contracts and other military contracts from the numerous places the US is waging aggressive war, he ain’t no radical.

A very good list. I would say that, having listened to many of Sanders’ speeches during the primaries, he mentioned doing several of these things, obliquely, at least. Even at 76, Sanders keeps evolving. No one else, including our last president, can say that. As disappointed as I was in Elizabeth Warren in the last election, (she could have supported Bernie and that would have given him Massachusetts) her book is quite good and hits a lot of homers. While not saying that we should accept incrementalism, Sanders and Warren remain the best bets of the Democratic party’s rise from demise and hopefully into something far more than the paltry, useless appendages we now have. Otherwise, I’d say burn it down and go third party.

I agree with all your suggestions except for three. Nationalization of the banks would be a mistake. What ought to happen is we should eliminate the central bank and force banks to operate on the market like any other business, with no bailouts, no “lender of last resort”, no special privileges.

Seizure of assets of billionaires is problematic. Many billionaires have made their money through illegitimate means (i.e. stealing the money from others), but we have to differentiate between legitimately earned wealth and stolen wealth. The stolen wealth should be returned to the individuals who it was stolen from, if such theft can be proven, but it shouldn’t be appropriated by the State.

Average people shouldn’t have the right to stop the drilling of oil fields on privately owned property. Now, the companies doing the drilling must be fully liable for damages they cause to other people or their property. But if they contain their activity to their own property, then no one else should have the right to stop them from extracting natural resources. The environment should be protected through property rights and the “full liability” principle.

Every other recommendation you make is spot on. Enlisted personnel absolutely should refuse to obey patently immoral orders. I support tax resistance always (I am opposed to taxation on principle). We should cut all foreign aid, especially to Israel given their treatment and occupation of the Palestinians. Dismantle the CIA immediately, absolutely. Abolish the Federal Reserve, close all foreign military bases, bring all the troops home, imprison all war criminals for their crimes and audit the Pentagon.

“I am opposed to taxation on principle” 1) money has only value because of an agreement of the society, hence it is totally legitimate if society decides to tax … 2) in a dynamic economy which supports risk taking, innovation and profit making we need to make sure that there is enough money going around and for this the government (who else?) needs to create money. In order for this creation of money not too cause inflation, taxes are needed to remove excess money from certain sectors of the economy … 3) excessive inequality is not only bad for innovation, rising inequality is also incompatible with a stable economy. Therefore taxes are needed for redistribution. In case one does not want to tax the billionaires too much, one can still increase inheritance tax as their children will have had no part in producing that wealth … 4) if you think that taxing is theft, go back to item 1 (the money of a society is owned by the society and so taxing by the society cannot be theft) … 5) furthermore, one can make the argument that only tax gives money its value. Here is the story: There once was a king who needed money for his soldiers. He printed coins and payed his army. But when the soldiers wanted to buy food they found that nobody wanted to take their coins. What did the king do? (No, he didnt guillotine people who refused to take his coins, this was in the French revolution) … 6) and here is why equality is important for the economy. As we all know markets are the best way to allocate resources. But only if all players in the market have roughly the same power, that is, the same wealth. It follows that (too big) inequality is not compatible with a market economy.

Money has value because people voluntarily decide to use it as a medium of exchange. The sorts of commodities that people have traditionally decided to use as money have met certain criteria. Money must be divisible, portable, durable and things of that nature. Left alone, people have picked precious metals like gold and silver since they best exhibit all the traits of “money”.

This is what “society” has chosen as money time and time again. But the State is not society. What States, bankers and oligarchs want is fiat paper money that they control. Fiat money created by a central bank allows the well-connected to enrich themselves at the expense of the rest of society. They get newly-printed money first, while it still has value. By the time this paper circulates down to the average person, inflation has destroyed a significant amount of it’s value.

If you are genuinely concerned about the things you claim to be concerned about, you ought to oppose central banking and fiat money. It is the single biggest driver of inequality in society.

Taxation is unjust because aggression is immoral. Thus, States have no moral claim to people’s property. Property can be seized if a court can demonstrate that the property was stolen. But in that case, the property should be redistributed back to it’s rightful owner, not appropriated by the State to spend on “public works” or something like that.

There’s actually more equality in societies that have robust free markets than there is in societies that don’t. But material equality should not be the goal. Human beings are not equal in talent, marketable skills, or in almost any other traits.

Take the most brilliant chess player in the world and compare him to the best basketball player in the world, Lebron James.

The chess player may be just as good of a chess player as Lebron is a basketball player , may have a far higher I.Q. and be “superior” in many ways to Lebron. But Lebron will likely always be far wealthier. The reason is that consumers have decided that watching basketball is much more satisfying than watching chess and they are willing to spend money for the privilege of doing so. There is a developed, profitable market for basketball, with arena ticket sales, TV deals, merchandise, etc.

Why would we want to equalize the wealth between these two individuals? Lebron’s wealth doesn’t come at the expense of the chess player. Radical attempts to equalize the wealth in society have only led to mass impoverishment.

There is inequality in wealth that is in excess of what a free market would produce. People who gain wealth through government subsidy or Federal Reserve bailouts do so at the expense of others. In a market, an entrepreneur gains wealth by providing value to others. It’s a win-win situation. With the State, some win at the expense of others.

I’m opposed to corporate welfare and government privilege granted to the wealthy. But there is no a priori cap on what a person can legitimately earn. I agree that most billionaires are on welfare, subject to special benefits. Some earned their wealth entirely illegitimately. The solution to the problem of the parasitic rich is to radically separate politics and wealth, which can only happen if you radically reduce the size and scope of the the State.

If the rich who’ve become accustomed to being on welfare can’t make it in a free market, they have to go bankrupt.

You’re solution to the problem, having the State regulate Wall Street more, will never work.

Do you think that someone can gain wealth legitimately? Putting aside billionaires, could an ingenious entrepreneur who invents an entirely new product that improves our lives earn one hundred million dollars legitimately? What is the limit to what you think a person could legitimately earn?

I’m drawing a distinction between the market entrepreneur and the political entrepreneur. We need more market entrepreneurs who seek wealth by attempting to satisfy consumer desires. The political entrepreneurs are the parasitic rich, who lobby government to grant monopolies, get free money from the Federal Reserve and loot the taxpayer.

Every time Israel offers to end the occupation, the Palestinians say “No!”
Even Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia (certainly not a Zionist) said that Arafat’s refusal to accept the January 2001 offer was a crime. Thousands of people would die because of Arafat’s decision & not one of those deaths could be justified.

As Clinton later wrote in his memoir:
It was historic: an Israeli government had said that to get peace, there would be a Palestinian state in roughly 97 percent of the West Bank, counting the [land] swap, and all of Gaza, where Israel also had settlements. The ball was in Arafat’s court.
But Arafat would not, or could not, bring an end to the conflict. “I still didn’t believe Arafat would make such a colossal mistake,” Clinton wrote. “The deal was so good I couldn’t believe anyone would be foolish enough to let it go.” But the moment slipped away. “Arafat never said no; he just couldn’t bring himself to say yes.”

No billionaire made that sort of money legitimately, none. When one plays the wallstreet game and gains wealth from a stacked deck, that is theft by valuation fraud. Nobody needs a billion dollars to live comfortable. Their fraudulent wealth must be denied.

Correct! Your list should be copied and distributed nation-wide! Any idea of reforming a totally corrupt two-party system from within, is engaging in fanciful dreams. Our history stands as irrefutable proof of that silliness. Your list represents the only honest and uncompromising approach to the problems facing us and by extension, the world. Unfortunately, only a true revolution would bring about these changes and it seems the “Murikan public has lost the stomach for conflict on any level. Sadly, we are not yet ‘uncomfortable’ enough. And so, we have lukewarm Sanders, calling for a “political revolution”, whatever he fancies that to be; presumably to include nipping and sniping at the edges of the true evil besetting this nation, namely unfettered capitalism, when the conditions clearly call for a true revolution.

I had a comment on your statement of particulars necessary to any effective change in our present dilemma but the moderators obviously felt that it would be better placed under comments by Jacob and Kurtz.

Sanders is still out of his depth on foreign policy but he’s still better than most of his colleagues in Washington. He doesn’t go nearly far enough and he doesn’t strike me as someone who’s ever focused on the issue or had a desire to read up on the subject.

My libertarian non-interventionism has a lot in common with the anti-imperialist Left. Noam Chomsky and Jill Stein are very libertarian on the issue of foreign policy. I’d say their views on foreign policy are almost like Ron Paul’s.

I’d hope that the Left continues to push Sanders to be more radical on foreign policy, more like Chomsky.

Libertarians Are The Puberty People – Great Insight ! Sanders is Spot On His Analysis Of American Foreign Policy – Need More Grassroots To Take Over The War Department & Make A Peace Department Out Of It – But Theirs No $$$$ In Peace Thou!

According to the Geneva Convention, combatants should not fight on after meekly waving a white flag whilst under fire from their own side.

76 now, 80 come next elections, feet up and writing his memoires at 88 if he goes two terms. Seems Bernie needs an heir-apparent, someone without liver spots, someone that won’t roll over and take a shafting from his own party at the behest of an insane witch. Shame no one out there would even dare try. America the Brave.

If no one wants to acknowledge and praise Sanders for at least saying something that most Republicans and Democrats are afraid to say, I DO! How do you expect a man to say everything everybody wants him to say? How many senators have come out in plain truth? He can’t please or satisfy everyone on both right and left, therefore don’t blame him for not saying what YOU want him say.

I’d rather have a 20 trillion deficit on money well spent, i.e., single payer and free public universities, lead free water and rebuilding dams, than giving it over to the endless war, bank bailouts and corporate welfare.

But I have to agree he’s still not saying enough in the way of anti-war and anti-imperialism, and I can’t say I trust him – especially since he’s remaining seemingly incapable of flatly denouncing the Democrats (also) as corporatist warmongers. Or is he still hoping to steer people ultimately back into the Clinton fold by giving them nowhere else to go?

That’s Rachel London, ‘sound engineer’. .. which makes it all the more vexing since there is no sound?

Anywho, it continues to astonish me people as politically astute and informed as Bernie (& Glenn ~ like my own flesh and blood!) backed the “invasion and occupation of Afghanistan”. Glenn, I believe, regrets that support now … but I wish Mehdi had asked if Bernie would still defend his vote today.
*Iirc, you were only about 12yr old then … but I bet even then you had better sense than that?

p.s. other than that mostly … Bernie is like a tall glass of water as I wonder aimlessly in the desert of Trump’s discontent

Some sound engineer, with only one microphone stand. Also, especially as an Independent, Bernie could have held it himself – and belted out a spittle-infused rendition of ‘My Way’ at the end for that matter.

I don’t begrudge your vision of Bernie the thirst-quencher, but I’ve seen enough movies to know that oftentimes these shimmering glimpses of hope turn out to be mirages.

Obama reckoned Afghanistan was the ‘just war,’ and tripled troop levels to 100,000 after taking office. Even the otherwise stalwart non-interventionist Ron Paul supported the initial invasion, weirdly enough. Greenwald has expressed regret over supporting the Iraq war, but regarding the idiocy in Afghanistan I’ve only noticed that he’s always very eager to point out how stupidly long we’ve been there. You’re right (pretty much) about my age, and indeed even at such a tender one I didn’t support either Iraq or Afghanistan invasions, or any other corporatist/manipulative imperialist interventions regardless of how much opium or Full Spectrum Dominance was up for grabs. I happen to have always hated war, especially since learning from my peacenik parents that it is predominantly and rather obviously a financial ‘racket’ as well as a whole mess of murdering.

I’m glad Bernie is adding to the conversation, but apart from my overall distrust of him due to previous comments and his Vermont connections to the Military-Industrial Complex, diplomatic talk is cheap and we need to go full antiwar or the Overton Window won’t shift enough. The US military alone has the carbon footprint of a small country, and bases need to be closed, funding needs to be drastically stopped – and all this talk of UN ‘allies’ getting together to fight as one (under US leadership probably) is as far as I’m concerned just more prattling drivel that allows things like Libya’s destruction and ganging up against God knows who next.

There’s definitely been a slow-down (sometimes I have to refresh 3 or 4 times.) of late in the commentary communication bat-channel, but if TI is actually ‘moderating’ anything . .. I can’t tell it!?

So, let me ask you directly Maisie; as a young lass, if the “invasion and occupation of Afghanistan” could have been averted by ‘droning’/assassinating Osama bin Laden (and, perhaps, a handful of other Saudi nationals!?) ~ thereby saving both the United States and Afghanistan the terrible burdens of war ~ what would have been your decision?

… The duties of those whom the peoples have freely and conscientiously elected as the representatives are no less vital and binding than the obligations of those who have chosen them. Their function is not to dictate, but to consult, and consult not only among themselves, but as much as possible with the peoples whom they represent. … They should never be led to suppose that they are the central ornaments of the body politic, intrinsically superior to others in capacity or merit, and the sole promoters of its teachings and principles. They should approach their task with extreme humility, and endeavour, by their open-mindedness, their high sense of justice and duty, their candour, their modesty, their entire devotion to the welfare and interests of the peoples, the Cause, and humanity, to win, not only the confidence and the genuine support and respect of those whom they serve, but also their esteem and real affection. They must, at all times, avoid the spirit of exclusiveness, the atmosphere of secrecy, free themselves from a domineering attitude, and banish all forms of prejudice and passion from their deliberations. They should, within the limits of wise discretion, take the peoples into their confidence, acquaint them with their plans, share with them their problems and anxieties, and seek their advice and counsel.

in the field, electronic journalists typically keep the microphone on the camera, or hold onto it … the better to shove it in the person’s face if they happen to move around

but since this was in the studio, the victim should really be “miked up” with a lavalier … although “podcasters” (whatever THAT is) are unlikely to have such a gizmo, since they’re not readily available at the Apple Store

serious broadcasters used to spend thousands of dollars on this stuff … and us small-timers would at least try to keep up by going to Radio Shack once in a while

unfortunately, sound waves are not “digital”… something the younger crowd seems to not be aware of

Mr. Sanders seems able to focus on other things besides the last election. This is unusual; D.C. politicians generally nurse grudges while endlessly rehashing the past. It is almost as if Mr. Sanders has moved on, and is thinking about the future.

So I wonder if Mr. Sanders has suffered some sort of head trauma. Did Mr. Hasan ask for a doctor to examine him during the interview? Something isn’t quite right here and I’d like to get to the bottom of it.

The biggest weakness in his foreign policy is that he says war is justified when our nation’s ‘interests’ are threatened. Where do we not have interests? We’re a global empire!

The interests of Big Business, Wall St., and the Bankers are the reason we maintain 1000 military bases in 150 countries. They need a protection racket. Some things never change, except they get even bigger and badder.

How do we know? Gen’l Smedley Butler, author of War is a Racket, nailed it over a half-century ago when he said: “I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested.

Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”
___

We now operate in nearly every country and continent on earth. The reason we spend so much on the Global War on Terror stems from preserving, protecting, and defending those key players, aka Our National Interest, not democracy, the Constitution and Bill of Rights, or the well-being of citizens. We already know we’re dispensable, except for being cannon fodder for wars. They don’t even need our tax dollars anymore since they wage wars on credit.

Can someone explain this to me please.
Just looked at the UNHCR database.
In 2016 there were millions of displaced Syrians registered in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. In poor Egypt, there is over 116,000.
In Saudi, there is a grand total, check this….a grand total of 29!!!
Yes. 29!!!!
People bellyache about Syrian refugee status in America, Europe, right or wrong.
But please explain to me why there is not a single story, press article, documentary, in any language, about the fact that there are no Syrian refugees in Saudi? Why?
Who made sure that this scandal remained unreported, and how was that achieved?

Led by the Saudis and Qatar, the Gulf states push the line that the refugee crisis is the outcome of Western inaction and the Syrian regime’s brutality, even as they throw billions of dollars in supplies and weaponry into the Syrian jihadist cauldron to oust Assad at all costs.

There was even a little coverage in some US corporate media, but mostly spun to defend the Saudis from such charges by pointing to their large donations to various charities, etc.

It’s an open question as to whether the Israelis or the Saudis exert more control over U.S. corporate media, really. But the corporate media in the end is just a loyal apparatchik for the imperial apparatus, and the ones who don’t sing the right song are not invited to return.

I am aware of this blip in reporting 18-24 months ago. At that time Saudis gave a number of 2.5 million Syrian refugees without a shred of evidence. Then there was the other estimate of 500k based on a French study that extrapolated data from a 100k increase in school enrollment, that was not linked to any particular population. Even if true, this was from 3-4 years ago. The only some what honest article at the time was from Jamal Kashoggi in Al Arabia I think. At least he had the temerity to say that Saudi did not take refugees because they were not set up to do so (read: could not be bothered). Now that he is a refugee himself, I wonder how he feels about writing this.

I know about this data, but it’s from 18-24 months ago. At the time the Saudi government claimed to have 2.5 million Syrians without a shred of evidence. An other estimate of 500k was based on a French study that extrapolated this figure from a blip in school enrollment of 100k, not linked to any population. Even if true this was over 3 years ago. The only frank reporting came from Jamal Kashouggi in Al Arabia, who simply stated that Saudi did not take refugees because they were not set up to do so (e.g. could not be bothered). Now that he is a refugee I wonder how he feels about that.
Since then, over 18-24 months, nada, zip.
I wish politicians like Sanders brought this up.

There are over a million Sunni’s trapped in Idlib under Al Nusra, thanks to in large part our brilliant foreign policy with our “partners” like Saudi and Qatar. I am not a big fan of jihadists but not all are. There is danger of a terrible situation there. They should have the option for safe passage to a safe close place like Saudi, if they chose so. Bernie?

Not trying to be sarcastic but this has been a heated topic for years and its the press that doesnt visit these type of topics you have to dig or AM talk radio. Ive never found a legitimate answer probaly never will.

In 2016, Sanders ISIS-itis on the brain. He’s long had a history of supporting US aggression and imperialism. He voted for the “Iraq liberation [sic] Act”, for AUMF, for the bombing of yugoslavia. He called for barbaric regimes in the Middle East to increase their commitment of US hegemony. He openly supported Obama’s murderous drone policy. He steadfastly stood by war criminal Clinton (who should be hanging from the rafters for her crimes against humanity).

He’s no friend to the 99%. He’s certainly no radical.

How fucked up does your sense of history have to be to mistake him for a friend?

This program, which has yet to be deployed in a combat capacity, was commissioned by the Pentagon in 1995 and has a projected cost of $1.5 trillion over the next 55 years, making it the most expensive weapons program in U.S. history. What hasn’t been the subject of as much ink, however, is the antiwar Democratic socialist senator who supports keeping the program in his state of Vermont: Bernie Sanders.

We can find similar flaws with any third party candidate you can name, be sure of that. There are no superheros waiting in the wings to rescue us, so just forget about that kind of thinking.

Sure, that sounds like lesser-evil thinking, meaning why not support Clinton over Trump since she was the lesser evil? Well, that’s because Trump, hateful as he may be, in terms of psychotic foreign policy, is less effective than Clinton would have been – meaning, Trump is actually less dangerous because the Borg State and the corporate media is not united behind him. Domestically, he’s a disaster, but not actually much worse than Clinton – loyal tool of Wall Street and Borg State agendas – would have been. Democratic Party members can’t say this, nor can Republicans, but these people are the enemies of the American middle class. Which is why I didn’t vote for either Clinton or Trump. They were equal evils.

I mean, the bottom line is that the Democratic and Republican Party leadership have betrayed the vast majority of the American public in favor of kickbacks from the oligarchs. The result is that the whole system is coming apart at the seams.

Now, can Bernie Sanders manage the collapse of Empire, which looks pretty inevitable at this point? He’s not FDR, aka “The Sphinx”, perhaps the master political strategist of the 20th century, but given the alternatives of the Bush clan and the Clinton clan and the Trumpsters, I’ll go with Sanders, thanks.

Yeah. Totally, but we only throw around these few names. I’ll vote for Bernie again but I really think he should not run, should not be thinking, nor planning to run. He should be networking with younger politicians, building up there names, stature and by being united, their messages to actually change his haggard party. Otherwise it’ll be another fixed primary loss.

But for the critics of Bernie Sanders from the left, who want the Noam Chomsky approach – that’s not what Bernie Sanders has been about as a politician. His agenda is pretty clear – resurrect the American middle class, which has been gutted by the neoliberal and neoconservative agenda in Washington DC for decades under both Democratic and Republican administrations.

Now, the argument for dismantling the American Empire that fits the Bernie Sanders agenda is this: The imperial program does not help the standard of living of the American middle class.

Anyone who examines the empires of the past – the Soviet Union and its satellite states, the British and French Empires of the 20th century, for example – will realize that the economic benefits of imperial systems only flow to the aristocrats who run the system, and those not connected to that system tend to lose out. The flow of goods and money from the overseas colonies becomes the dominant factor in the economy, and only those connected to the centers of power gain any benefits from it. There’s are even terms for this kind of internal imperial decay – the imperial malaise, the Byzantine corruption, etc. Part of it is that the bureaucracy of empire grows so large that nothing else can flourish – the Soviet Union being a perfect example of that.

With the U.S. today, it’s the sprawling complex based in Washington, the Pentagon-State-CIA-NSA and affiliated agencies (at least 16 of them), plus their vast constellation of private contractors who provide so many services, such as keeping the overseas military bases supplied, the hordes of lobbyists and think tank fellows who run back and forth between the executive complex, Congress, and the corporate media – that’s the bureaucracy of empire. And, to repeat, it is NOT serving the interests of the American middle class – just the interests of a relatively small group of American oligarchs and their foreign allies (like the Saudi Princes, London bankers, etc.)

The future of this beast, that’s highly questionable. Several decades of disastrous policies, such as the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the failed regime change games in Libya and Syria, the ongoing Vietnam-style story of Afghanistan – the American Empire looks to be in a state of terminal decline. Outside of Saudi Arabia/GCC and Israel, there are really no true client states left; no rational foreign leader would ever trust Trump, either.

And the domestic situation for the Empire? Face reality, when a government fails to serve the interests of the vast majority of its population, that government’s days are numbered. The crumbling domestic infrastructure in the U.S., the crappy public health and education system, the neoliberal destruction of well-paid blue-collar jobs for Wall Street’s benefit, the massive debts piled on the backs of the American middle class – all while the imperial leaders engage in stupid foreign adventures and bailout the crooks on Wall Street with taxpayer money – it looks like the rot is set in so deep that there’s no way the Empire can survive.

I don’t see even Bernie Sanders as capable of managing such a collapse effectively – he’s a nice guy, with good FDR-style policies, but the internal trauma of a collapsing infighting Borg State? I mean, we might have to go through something like the collapse of the Soviet Union, with a massive cutback in military-industrial spending and ex-bureaucrats forced to work as taxi drivers instead of having luxurious Black Sea villas and private drivers. Hopefully we can manage such a collapse better than the Soviets did, with their decade of Boris Yeltsin’s idiocy before Putin managed to reconstruct a decent standard of living for most Russians – but who knows? It’s probably not going to be pretty, any way it goes.

I can see Bernie Sanders doing a far better job on this front than Clinton Democrats, or Bush Republicans, though – but more Trump, that’s like having Boris Yeltsin running the country.

While he’s moved quite a bit on certain hot issues (Iran, Israel), Bernie’s FP remains half-fledged, stunted. I think ‘radical’ is over-sell by a good bit. Still, I think he’s strengthening his weaknesses here. Bernie learned last cycle that he could speak the unspeakable on domestic policy and not just survive, but thrive (23 primaries). He should do the same in FP: be bold, and be rewarded. Be conventional, be punished.

His use of the Marshall Plan is not just a historical example–it could also be a very sound basis/inspiration, for a Sanders FP.

We’re going to install Bernie as POTUS. If not via Track I, then using Track II. I named two Air Force programs Bernie (strategic) and Have Trump (tactical).

It was an honor to visit Burlington on July 19, 1990 & June 12, 1992 and hear and see how proud the community was of Bernie. And I very much enjoyed the view from the old control tower at BTV, looking down on The Green Mountain boys.

One would be a fool to think Sander’s isn’t a politician. Yes, he does not go far enough, but at some point we get into “lack of ideological purity” or “No True Scotsman” territory. He doesn’t need to be Chomsky, he just needs to be better than what we’ve had for the last 30+ years.

“So, to be clear, would he support a U.S. president sitting down with the leader of North Korea to try and resolve the nuclear crisis? . . . .”

That’s a job for his Secretary of State, which would have been an excellent question to ask.

Who do you think would make a good Secretary of State?

You can’t expect someone to be an expert on everything. Presidents set overall policy and direction. They empower people to make choices and decisions, negotiate treaties and so forth. In this case, he could offer to temporarily suspend the war games in Korea while diplomatic talks take place.

he rebuked Russian President Vladimir Putin for “trying to weaken the transatlantic alliance.”

Get NATO off Russia’s doorstep and maybe Putin will be more amenable.

Anyway, most Americans care more about domestic policy than foreign policy.

Sanders is a sheepdog for the corrupt and criminal Democratic party, and more broadly the American exceptionalism that supports world wide military and economic domination. He has supported almost every military spending bill put before him. He supported the war criminal, Hillary Clinton even though she and her merry band of neoliberal asshats cheated him in the primaries. Once in a while he says something mildly critical of Israel as they slaughter innocents… how brave of him! His occasional leftist rhetoric rings hollow in the face of what we are dealing with. He is a faker who will always come back to the Tweedle-Dee (or is Tweedle-Dumb?) fold with his tail between his legs.

Perhaps true, but at the moment, he is an important voice of dissent who is trying to change the conversation in ways that few others are. And he’s actually got some people paying attention to those issues. It’s a start.

And so it goes. People fall for his transparent shtick over and over. The hack talks. That is it. His rhetoric is soothing horseshit when put up against the reality of the police state, the surveillance state, and the MIC.

Please let Donald Trump meet with Dana Rohrbacher head of the House Foreign Affairs Russia subcommittee to provide him evidence relevant to disbanding Bob Muellers ORIGINAL investigation into the TRUMP PUTIN US ELECTION COLLUSION DELUSION so he can focus like a laser on Flynns RT speaking fee and the FBI funded GPSFusion Trump Dossier Comey shared with John McCain and submitted to the FISA Court to further supplement GCHQs blanket surveillance of the Trump team, family and employees with “wiretaps” on Paul Manafort, Carter Page an Roger Stone.

Great, another Israel-firster heard from! When an occupying fascist force slaughters more than 2,000 people in a very short time… while “mowing the lawn” (a euphemism for mass murder) including more than 500 children, it is nice to know that many sadistic asshole goose-steppers support them. Go fuck yourself, you irredeemable fascist twat.

“mowing the lawn” is not a euphemism for mass murder.
It means that instead of doing a complete job of pulling out all the grass (which would involve massive casualties) it does only a partial job (which involves fewer casualties, but will be only temporary.)

That’s a pretty broad and uninformed thing to say. More accurate would be that if you unquestioningly support the radically right-wing leaders who currently control Israeli policy, you are making things worse for the world and for the U.S.

Actually, no. What Israel is doing and has done is clearly and unambiguously wrong. They terrorized native population into leaving, and will not allow them to go back to their property. Right now they are slowly removing people from the land that they are illegally occupying just because those people are not Jews. They arrest and torture people without a trial including children. They shoot at people without warning if they cross some imaginary line. They do things like bomb the area from where the rocket was launched to punish local civilians. They know full well that the guy who launched the rocket is long gone by the time they bomb the place so this is a purely punitive measure against civilians. Israeli military and state finance, promote and protect settlers as they terrorize natives and even murder them. They do things like restricting amount of calories that can enter Gaza just so people would suffer. I could go on and on.

The day after the UN Partition Resolution in November 1947, some racist, xenophobic Palestinians started a genocidal war to exterminate the Jews. Haj Amin el-Husseini – “I declare a holy war, my Muslim brothers! T Murder the Jews! Murder them all!”

No one would have been displaced if racist, xenophobic Palestinians had not started a genocidal war to exterminate the Jews.

It wasn’t just that Haj Amin el-Husseini, the head of the Palestinians, said – “I declare a holy war, my Muslim brothers! T Murder the Jews! Murder them all!”

That same day, Palestinians attacked a Jewish bus driving on the Coastal Plain near Kfar Sirkin killing five and wounding others. Half an hour later Palestinians ambushed a second bus, southbound from Hadera, killing two more. Arab snipers attacked Jewish buses in Jerusalem and Haifa.

No one would have been displaced if racist, xenophobic Palestinians had not started a genocidal war to exterminate the Jews.

You are talking nonsense. Zionists set out a project to create a Jewish state and drive out non-jews, and that is what they did. 800,000 people were not driven out to create a majority Jewish state because some guy said something and some bus got attacked. Use your head dude.

Zionism means creating a majority-Jewish state.
Zionism does not mean driving out non-Jews.

In 1929, Palestinians ethnically cleansed Hebron & Gaza of their Jews.
In 1948, Arabs ethnically cleansed the West Bank & East Jerusalem of their Jews. Zero Jews were left in Gaza, the West Bank or East Jerusalem. Israel could have ethnically cleansed all the Arabs from Israel, but Israel didn’t. There are now 1.6 million Arabs living in Israel.

Israel isn’t perfect just like the US or any other place is not perfect. And I absolutely know some settlers do things they should be arrested for.
But I strongly suggest you fact check your history and your broader perspective on Israel, including the terms ” native” and what/who made the Palestinian Arabs leave and what happened when they went to other Arab countries, which other countries now have Palestinian Arabs in their borders in addition to
Israel, what those countries’ laws are concerning the status of these people. Anyone who thoroughly studies the history of the entire Levantine region from at least the time of the Ottoman Empire, if not before,, may have differing conclusions about how to handle the current issues, but I’ll guarantee all would agree that the history and current situation is very complex and to reduce it to bad guys and good guys, or occupiers and oppressed victims, shows a lack of understanding of the issues. I challenge you to research everything in depth from multiple sources. The information is readily available to anyone who cares about the truth.

Settlers are not nice? There isn’t supposed to be any settlers. You are not supposed to occupy land and replace native people with settlers.

And history is pretty clear. People lived there, were driven out, and are not allowed to return to their property that they are entitled to. It does not matter what other Arab states may or may have done. No amount of spin or historic revisionism will change that.

Jews lived for centuries in Hebron & Gaza. In 1929, Hebron & Gaza were ethnically cleansed of their Jews. In 1948, the West Bank & East Jerusalem were ethnically cleansed of their Jews. Why is it wrong for Jews to rebuild their homes in Hebron, Gaza, the West Bank & East Jerusalem?

The Intercept isn’t doing itself any favors by having someone with a muslim surname pressing Sanders repeatedly to criticize Israel. Who in the Real World thinks that is an objective journalist on that issue? Editor!!!

With Trump in self-destruct mode, everyone else defined “low energy” etc or low recognition or too extreme, Bernie could be the last man standing 2020. However, he will also need to explain his views and past actions to the same swing voters that elected Trump. The left and right base are locked-up about even. He could be a good or even great President. Just like his several predecessors who failed at grasping the greatness of diminishing Empire and restoring the Republic and common good, he might get the same chance for a change presidency.

“by the depressingly low standard of modern U.S. politics” is the main heart of this article for me. sanders is the least worst when it comes to the sociopathic whores running the US but he’s hardly comparable to corbyn.

spouting trite “can’t we all just get along” and “blah blah 1967″ platitudes with israel misses many points entirely. israel has always been a problem but now they have upped their game by joining with jordan, egypt and the gulf states to form some kind of oil-powered voltron made of assholes. the houthis and the “shia crescent” are where it’s at in 2017. anything salafists and zionists do they can do better.

sanders also falls safely into the modernist marxist/capitalist trend of addressing every economic (and to a degree every social) issue as “who gets how much” as opposed to “why is our global economy running on war profits and ponzi schemes and overvalued tech monopolies?”

spreading the “wealth” around sounds great until you realize the “wealth” is smoke and mirrors. also the “wealth” is what causes 99.99999% of all the horrible foreign policy around which he dances so delicately. if the israelis and saudis didn’t have cash to throw at every potomac prostitute that will grab it would they even exist at this point? or would the green-tinted glasses come off to reveal what drooling, bigoted, omnicidal lunatics they are?

whatever. it’s out of his power to change anything at this point so the discussion is moot.

This article has an exaggerated headline. Sanders’ proposed foreign policies, by and large, would be fairly mainstream among Western Europe’s elite politicians (not just Corbyn). Consequently, his proposals aren’t radical. I don’t think Sanders is even suggesting that his current proposals are “what a radical foreign policy looks like”. Sanders is usually skillful at focusing on ideas that he sees as politically viable in the short term, while sweeping under the rug his medium-term and long-term visions that are outside the mainstream.

This article is just misguided. It’s true that our foreign policy needs a major overhaul to break with elite interests, so I guess in that sense the word “radical” is appropriate. But the author of this article has succumbed to the mistake of allowing high-ranking politicians to largely set the agenda. Taking your cues from “left” elite officials like Sanders and Corbyn is the same mistake that mainstream journalists make in taking their cues from a Clinton or a Bush. We should NEVER let a famous politician tell us “This is what a good ___ policy looks like”; instead, it’s for us the people to set the agenda and then make politicians follow it. The Intercept’s Mehdi Hassan emphasizes Medicare For All as a radical proposal (which it isn’t really), and acts as if we should be satisfied to see someone like Sanders voicing support for whatever the foreign-policy equivalent of Medicare For All might be. But as long as you see things that way you’ll be deceived by elite politicians.

Let’s be clear: a foreign policy that truly reflects principles of justice is one that doesn’t just keep on blustering about the same old sensationalized threats. A principled and well-thought-out foreign policy would focus mainly on resisting how the familiar foreign-policy tools are exploited by the global 1%, and by wannabe elites, to keep the rest of us down.

It’s a real shame that Bernie has attained this level of prominence and popularity only at such an advanced age. His mind and energy are incredible for a man approaching 80 But are there no charismatic leftist politicians in the prime of life who could succeed him? Or will his movement soon be led down the garden path by careerist false prophets like Obama?

This is the first Intercept itv/article where I had to keep reminding myself that it was indeed the Intercept. Mr. Hasan’s style is somewhere between Piers Morgan and a random CNN correspondant. In other words, we don’t need to somehow identify the foreign policy equivalent of Sanders’ ‘Medicare for All’. Thanks for the cable news equivalent of dumbing down the issues though!

I thought the same. There’s an almostsensationalist feel to his descriptions of the interview, as if the writer prizes the (as he makes it seem…) drama of the conversation as much as Sanders’s actual positions. Please stop wasting my time with the gotcha tone. And yeah, what was up with his obsessing over a foreign policy version of Medicare for all?? Stop.

I agree. I was disgusted by Sanders’s full-throated support for Clinton after she won the nomination (it would have been totally different had he just said that she was a preferable alternative to Trump or that we can’t have Trump, but he actually campaigned for that disgusting neoliberal war monger). Then Sanders went around the country campaigning (or whatever you call it) with the disgusting head of the DNC.

The idea that the Democratic Party can be saved or reformed is delusional. That party is every bit as much a part of corporate American and the military industrial complex as the Republican Party. I’ve got major complaints about the Green Party, but they’re far better than either of the two gangs that run the country.

You need to do a better job in presenting your arguments. These are your three answers to the same question:

1) “I’d suggest the same approach: Don’t sell them weapons.”
2) “The new approach probably involves a lot less chest beating and economic abuse.”
3) “It’s clear that he would like to pursue normalization of relations.”

The US does not sell weapons to Iran. There are already multi billion deals between the US and Iran. And what do you mean by “normalization of relations”? An embassy in Tehran, that’s set?

First, it’s not that complicated. Second, I intentionally don’t spend a lot of effort explaining pretty simple stuff to you. The subtext of my replies should be clear: “Stop acting like an idiot. We all know that the US has adversaries and allies based on imperialistic interests. Maybe a more humane approach would help avert the next disaster?”

Seems pretty clear if you bother to read the article – “an even-handed approach”. That would mean we don’t designate Saudi Arabia as ally, or Iran as enemy, but rather use the same set of standards to judge both countries, largely as potential trade partners.

At the same time, there’s also a very good argument for closing the U.S. military bases in the region; it would save billions and the ‘strategic’ need for controlling Middle Eastern oil is basically gone. This would of course require direct talks between Iran and the Emirates, Saudis, Kuwaitis, etc. And an end to the Saud war on Yemen.

Of course, the GCC monarchies don’t like this – they’re well aware that the notion of hereditary dictatorship, aka ‘monarchy’, has little place in the modern world and they’d have to cede much personal power to elected parliaments – which would surely cut the Royal Family handouts back severely.

Israel would no doubt freak out over this approach, but Israel is always freaking out – a national state of paranoia. Perhaps with some reason, given the history of warfare in the region, but since they’ve got their 100 nuclear weapons, no Arab state is going to attack Israel. They’d be restrained from attacking other states with impunity, perhaps, as they did when they bombed Lebanon in 2006 – and they’d have to reform their domestic apartheid policies and end the military occupation of Palestinian territories, very sad days for the Zionists, but plenty of secular-minded Jews and Arabs within Israel could learn to live with it.

More generally, expanded trade with Iran would be of great benefit to many American companies, wouldn’t it? If we don’t raise sanctions, then Iran will merely do all its trade with China and Russia, which won’t help the American middle class at all.

Saudi Arabia is already a US trade partner. Iran is also a US trade partner to a certain extent. Apparently you guys don’t even know what the new approach is. It is pathetic ( but not surprising) that you are promoting ideas that you are incapable of elaborating upon. You do not designate Saudi Arabia as an ally, that means you will not sell them weapons. This constitutes sanctions because of their policies. But Iran is doing the same thing Saudi Arabia is doing. Nevertheless you want to expand trade with Iran and then you call it even handed.

I understand why you want to abandon a despotic regime that finances armed terrorist groups, and fuels wars in the region, but I don’t understand why at the same time you want rapprochement to another despotic regime that finances armed terrorist groups and fuels wars in the region.
(Actually I understand. As part of the anti US crew in the comment sections you gloss over crimes committed by US adversaries. If Iran was a US ally you would certainly call the US to abandon the despotic regime of the Ayatollah)

And I sincerely wonder whether you guys even try to improve your knowledge of international politics. This is you:
“At the same time, there’s also a very good argument for closing the U.S. military bases in the region; it would save billions”
Dude, those countries Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, UAE pay directly and indirectly for US and European countries bases on their soil. Those countries do not get military aids like Egypt. They pay for everything.

“Dude, those countries Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, UAE pay directly and indirectly for US and European countries bases on their soil. Those countries do not get military aids like Egypt. They pay for everything.”

You really don’t know how the system is set up, do you? Look – the bases are paid for by the U.S. taxpayer. The money that the monarchies make from oil sales – that doesn’t pay for the bases. That money is recycled to Wall Street funds, by direct investment and unnecessary arms sales, where it benefits a small select group of Amercan oligarchs and their associates, who, via their control of paid-off politicians and bureaucrats, make sure that American tax dollars continue to flow into the Pentagon, where they are used to finance the bases in the Middle East, and prop up the dictators, helping ensure that they are not replaced by parliamentary democracies who might not agree to this so-called “petrodollar recycling.”

In order to prevent this monetary transition to a basket of currencies, the Nixon administration began high-level talks with Saudi Arabia to unilaterally price international oil sales in dollars only – despite U.S. assurances to its European and Japanese allies that such a unique monetary/geopolitical arrangement would not transpire. In 1974 an agreement was reached with New York and London banking interests which established what became known as “petrodollar recycling.”

This is still the basis of the ‘special relationship’ with Saudi Arabia and the GCC monarchies.

This deal does NOT benefit the average American citizen, who would be better served by directing those taxpayer dollars to domestic infrastructure, public heath and education – and also by fair trade with all Middle East countries, not just with a the corrupt monarchies.

“You really don’t know how the system is set up, do you? Look – the bases are paid for by the U.S. taxpayer.”

Tell us how much the US taxpayer paid for the construction of the US Air Force base in Qatar. Also tell us the US taxpayer paid for the US Army facilities in Kuwait used for Desert Storm/Shield and Iraqi Freedom. Do not make us wait please.

For the last decade, the overall trade balance with Iran has heavily favored the U.S., with two-thirds of business representing American exports. Normalizing trade with Iran will benefit Iran to a far greater degree than the the U.S.. “Agriculture, particularly soybeans and soybean oil, dominated American sales.” Iran’s chief exports to the United States is art and carpets. Further development of Iran’s energy infrastructure could benefit many western economies especially upon the completion of the Persian pipeline which will deliver south Pars LPG to Europe via Turkey.

Sanders says that he’s opposed to Israel’s Gaza occupation. Why then doesn’t he support BDS? Why hasn’t he introduced any bills in Congress to completely cut off all Israeli aid until they stop the Gaza Occupation?

Gaza is under siege, not “occupation”. The rest of Palestine, (which doesn’t exist, according to the right wing wack jobs) is under “occupation” except for the parts that have already been stolen. All in all, a magnificent tribute to the effectiveness of the UN, as well as of the hypocrisy of the United states of Mendacity.

omg Israel hasn’t been in Gaza in 10-12 years! Israel forced all their own citizens to leave the region. Israel left their thriving floral industry intact when they left and gave the Palestinian authority equipment, a bunch of cash and technical resources. After all these years Gaza could be self sustaining or even thriving. Hmm, instead they have a great big Fuck You to Israel by destroying all the resources Israel left for them and concentrated instead on revenge in various forms.
Get your facts straight.

In addition, even if one does not agree with Israeli policy vis-à-vis The West Bank/Judea/Samaria, the BDS is a total farce. For starters, Israel is democratic enough that they allow the non-Israeli leader of BDS (sorry his name escapes me) to attend an Israeli university. Yes, non-Israeli BDS leader is attending university in Israel. Or was…perhaps he is finished by now.
In addition, unless you live off grid in a remote Siberian village the same way our ancestors lived a century ago, it is humanly impossible to interface the modern world without using Israeli technology, medicine, or products. Israeli meaning created/manufactured in Israeli, or invented/created by an Israeli. Absolutely impossible. The closest analogy I can think of offhand—it’s a little like living in the US and completely avoiding all products made in China. It possibly could be done but would be very difficult.